Cultures of Power

Lordship, Status, and Process in Twelfth-Century Europe

Edited by Thomas N. Bisson

Publication Year: 1995

The authors of Cultures of Power proffer diverse perspectives on the prehistory of government in Northern France, Spain, Germany, the Low Countries, and England. Political, social, ecclesiastical, and cultural history are brought to bear on topics such as aristocracies, women, rituals, commemoration, and manifestations of power through literary, legal, and scriptural means.

Cover

Title Page, Copyright

Contents

Preface

In this volume are gathered papers originally prepared for an interdisciplinary
conference on Power and Society in the Twelfth Century (1050—
1225) sponsored by the committee on medieval studies at Harvard University.
The occasion and purpose of the conference are explained in the
Introduction, which is devoted to the contents of this volume. But no ...

List of Abbreviations

Introduction

In 1988 the Committee on Medieval Studies at Harvard University authorized
me to organize an interdisciplinary conference. I welcomed the
invitation not only as an opportunity to carry on in a worthy tradition of
the Committee but also as an occasion for trying out an idea well suited to
collaborative exploration. I wanted to see what would happen if specialists ...

Part I. Elites Old and New

1. Nobles and Knights in Twelfth-Century France

Marc Bloch could not have imagined the long shadow his discursive essays
entitled Feudal Society (1939-40) would cast over the historiography of
medieval France.1 Seeking to capture the essence of medieval society for
a general audience, he framed a paradigm of social organization that has ...

2. Instruments of Power: The Profile and Profession of ministeriales Within German Aristocratic Society (1050–1225)

In the last of the illuminations that decorate the Bern manuscript of Peter
of Eboli's Liber ad honorem Augusti, Emperor Henry VI is depicted in triumph
over his enemies, seated on a throne flanked by his principal counsellors:
Conrad of Querfurt, bishop of Hildesheim and chancellor of the
Empire; Markward of Annweiler, duke of Ravenna and imperial seneschal; ...

3. Castles, Barons, and Vavassors in the Vendômois and Neighboring Regions in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries

It is Georges Duby who first sketched the portrait of those milites who
found a place in the elite by sitting in a castellan's court, thereby sharing
in a more elevated sociability than that of the village. He cited Guigonnet
de Germolles as an example of such a knight.1 Other historians also found
such examples and in 1960 Jean Richard provided the fullest description of

4. Women and Power

The word "power" (pouvoir) is vague in French. Let it be clear that I shall
not be speaking of all kinds of power, but only of that expressed by the
Latin term potestas in records of the period we have chosen to study. That
is, the power to command and to punish. My question is this: in what
measure did women share in this power?...

Part II. Strategy, Means, Process

5. Proposing the Ordeal and Avoiding It: Strategy and Power in Western French Litigation, 1050–1110

In around 1060, a famulus called Bunghole2 became entangled in a lawsuit
with the abbey of Saint Vincent of Le Mans when, with the support
of his lord, Richard of Loupfougere, he challenged the monks' right to a
tithe in the village of Puizieux. In response, abbot Hugh arranged a meeting
to discuss the dispute in the court of count Roger of Montgomery at ...

6. England, France, and the Problem of Sacrality in Twelfth-Century Ritual

Historians have long recognized the importance of ritual in communicating
the sacred attributes of early medieval kingship. For almost as long
they have understood that the power of later medieval monarchies to shape
public opinion was the power of political theater.1 But between the sacred
liturgies of pontifical kings and the political theater of statist monarchs lies ...

7. Law and Power in Twelfth-Century Flanders

In the twelfth century the county of Flanders was one of the most famous
"territorial principalities" of the kingdom of France.1 For two centuries it
had behaved as an autonomous state—Galbert of Bruges does not hesitate
to call it a regnum and its count a princeps2—but legally speaking it
was held in fief from both the French and the German crowns. These two ...

8. Papal Judges Delegate and the Making of the "New Law" in the Twelfth Century

In the exercise of power in twelfth-century Europe, no claims to primacy
of authority and jurisdiction equalled those of the papacy in their universality
and essentially spiritual nature. The fundamental basis of papal claims
to universal jurisdiction lay centuries earlier in the doctrine of Petrine supremacy,
the superiority of Peter among the apostles. From the fourth
and fifth centuries, following the imperial acceptance of Christianity, this ...

Part III. Cultures of Power

9. Sacred Sanctions for Lordship

Imprisoned in Pavia and frustrated in his episcopal ambitions, Rather
of Liege, writing his Praeloquia about 935, denounced lordly pretentions
among the hereditary nobility. The "patron" or "lord" (senior), as he was
now customarily flattered,1 paid no heed to what Augustine, Gregory, and
Benedict had set down long ago about human "equality" before God. Distinctions
among people arose, Rather pointedly noted, from the human ...

10. León: The Iconography of a Capital

Among the earliest of Romanesque tympana is one over the door opening
into the southern aisle of the church of San Isidoro in Leon. At first
glance the choice of the ancient theme of the Agnus Dei seems to reflect the
pioneering state in the early twelfth century of the tradition of figured tympana.
The pairing on the central axis of the Lamb and the Offering of Isaac
apparently establishes a eucharistic iconography of a type which was to remain ...

11. Jongleur as Propagandist: The Ecclesiastical Politics of Marcabru's Poetry

So ends a biography (or vida) prefacing a group of poems attributed to the
vernacular poet and performer Marcabru in a thirteenth-century manuscript
collection of lyrics.2 What is the historical value of such a statement?
Literary scholars have shown that many of these vidas are based solely on
interpretations of the poetry that follows in a particular manuscript collection, ...

12. Courtliness and Social Change

This study suggests ways of assessing the part played by courtly literature
and courtly ideals in the social changes of the twelfth century. It is not easy
to assess the role of literature and ideas in any climate of social crisis and
change.1 For twelfth-century court society, where imaginative literature
forms a large part of the documentation, the problems are great, and that ...

Potestas and dominatio: even when denoting traditional rulers of royal rank,
power and lordship were highly sulfurous concepts within clerical Herrschaftstheologie.
1 I have quoted from one of Gregory VTPs famous letters
to Hermann, bishop of Metz; I could as well have called on Augustine's
earlier condemnation of Roman lust for domination, libido dominandi.2

Conclusion

People feared the great in the twelfth century, and wondered who was
great. Men with power, worried when they lacked status or recognition,
struggled to secure customary—that is, legal—assurance of rank. It is a
characteristic oddity that ministeriales tainted with servitude often rose
higher in their societies than the untainted famuli., mayors, and provosts
of western France. But it is clear that service created power. By the later ...

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